Rachelle McCalla - Princess in Peril

“I’m going to open the door and we’re both going down the manhole,” her new bodyguard told her.

“No!” Princess Isabelle attempted to free herself. Her royal motorcade was under attack, but that didn’t mean she was going underground.

Levi had her clamped against him so securely she couldn’t move more than an inch in any direction. She felt his neatly-trimmed beard brush her temple as he spoke briskly into her ear. “Once I open the door we’ll be vulnerable. We need to get below ground as quickly as possible.”

Isabelle took a shaky breath. To his credit, though he held her immobile, Levi wasn’t squeezing her too hard for her to breathe. Maybe it was that small allowance that made her decide to trust him.

Or maybe it was because she didn’t have any choice.

Another blast rocked the air, and the hood from another vehicle crashed against the limousine’s windshield.

“We won’t be safe if we stay here. We’ve got to move now.”

RACHELLE McCALLA is a mild-mannered housewife, and the toughest she ever has to get is when she’s trying to keep her four kids quiet in church. Though she often gets in over her head, as her characters do, and has to find a way out, her adventures have more to do with sorting out the carpool and providing food for the potluck. She’s never been arrested, gotten in a fistfight or been shot at. And she’d like to keep it that way! For recipes, fun background notes on the places and characters in this book and more information on forthcoming titles, visit www.rachellemccalla.com.

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To Genevieve the Brave, my princess

With thanks and gratitude to my husband Ray, patient first reader, whose grammar and spelling skills far exceed my own.

Thanks also to Emily Rodmell, visionary editor, and all the helpful readers whose insights and encouragement have helped to hone this story. I hope you will not be disappointed.

And eternal praise and thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ, hero of that great epic, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Amen.

The Lord says: Although I sent them far away

among the nations and scattered them among

the countries, yet for a little while I have been a

sanctuary for them in the countries where they have

gone. I will gather you from the nations and bring

you back from the countries where you have been

scattered, and I will give you back the land again.

— Ezekiel 11:16–17

The royal motorcade lurched to an unexpected stop. Her Royal Highness Princess Isabelle of Lydia glanced at Levi Grenaldo, her recently appointed bodyguard, expecting him to make some reassuring gesture that would indicate nothing was amiss.

He didn’t look her way. In the silvery sheen of his mirrored sunglasses, Isabelle saw only the rear bumper of her brother’s limousine sitting still on the road in front of them. The seconds ticked by and they sat, unmoving, in the narrow streets of Sardis, Lydia’s capital city.

Something had to be wrong. The motorcade represented the power and pageantry of the royal family and therefore never stopped until it arrived at its destination.

“Why are we stopped?”

Levi didn’t acknowledge her question, but instead pressed the button for the intercom and told the driver, “Get us off this street.”

When the driver hesitated, Levi pressed the button again.

“Now.”

Much as she wanted to remain calm, Isabelle felt her fingers tighten as they gripped the edge of the leather seat. She didn’t like anything about this situation. For one thing, she didn’t trust Levi.

He’d been abruptly appointed as her personal bodyguard five days earlier with no explanation given, and on top of that, he didn’t fit the profile for a bodyguard. Although he was plenty tall and his shoulders were broad with muscles, he was otherwise trim, and the dark angles of his beard gave his face a scholarly look. Unlike all the bodyguards she’d ever had before, his neck wasn’t thicker than his head, and he looked unusually sharp in the tuxedo he wore for the state dinner they were about to attend.

Besides that, the bodyguard read books. Intelligent ones. She’d seen him with his nose buried in political tomes whenever he waited for her to finish an appointment.

Out of place as those attributes seemed, what really bothered her was the way he overrode her requests and limited her freedom. As the eldest daughter of King Philip and Queen Elaine, Isabelle was used to having to change her plans to protect her safety, but Levi’s impediments went far beyond the usual. They’d butted heads several times. After three days she’d asked to have him removed, but her father had refused her request.

All her instincts told her something was amiss.

The driver had the car two points into what promised to be an eighteen-point turn on the narrow street when suddenly a deafening blast rent the air, rattling the official limo, and an orange ball of fire seared the sky in front of them.

Levi’s hand mashed the intercom button.

“Back! Back! Now!”

A second explosion rocked the air even closer behind them, and Isabelle felt the car shudder. Though the royal limousines were made of bulletproof materials, she doubted they’d be any match for that kind of explosion. Her heart twisted with concern for the rest of her family. Alexander, her only living brother, rode in the limousine ahead of her, which didn’t appear to have been damaged by the blast, but her parents’ car was out of sight ahead of those carrying other royal officials. It would have been close to where the first explosion hit.

And her sister, Anastasia, rode in a car somewhere behind hers. Black smoke filled the air. Isabelle couldn’t see any sign of her sister’s car.

Levi cracked the door open and looked down at the street, letting in a wave of heat and the stench of fire and explosives.

“Shut that!” Isabelle lunged past him to close the door, mindful that, inadequate as the car might seem against the fiery blasts, it was the only protection they had.

He pulled the door closed and would have met her eyes had his not been hidden behind his ever-present sunglasses. But his face was suddenly far closer than she was used to her bodyguards’ faces being, even in the midst of pressing crowds and certainly not in the backseat of a car.

His hand hit the intercom again. “Back up three feet and a little to the left.”

The driver obeyed promptly this time.

Even before the limousine had come to a stop, Levi had the door open again. He leaned out and wrestled with something on the ground.

For a second, Isabelle thought about shoving him out and locking the door after him. But much as she didn’t like the man, she wouldn’t stoop to such a move just to keep herself safe, though his actions seemed to endanger both of them, and it frightened her.